Electronics Lab

Consulting, design, and assembly services

The design section at the electronics lab supplies consulting, design and assembly services for hardware and software systems oriented for scientific tasks. The vast electronics experience enables the design of both analog and digital electronics for the following applications:

Sensors, Transducers and Interfaces

Motion & Nano-Motion Controllers

Digital & Analog Control Systems

Digital Design & Modeling - VHDL

Software Design - C/C++/CVI/LabView

Embedded & Wireless Systems

Physical Systems - Analyses & Modeling

Mechatronics and Power Electronics

Digital Signal Processing & MATLAB

Imaging, Vision & Machine Vision

Board Design and Spice Modeling

Here we present several typical examples of projects that the lab developed together with the School's researchers. Some of these projects were published in scientific journals.

DBD – Control system for a pulsed gas valve combined with a high voltage discharge

A controller producing short high-voltage pulses of 5000 Volts for a Dielectric Barrier Discharge system. The controller is based on a full FET bridge which operates at MegaHertz frequency. Synchronously to this voltage pulse, the system produces a high current pulse of tens of Ampers to operate a pulse valve operating at a rate of 2000 Hertz. The system is computer controlled through USB communication.

Programmable multi-channel system for characterization of silicon nanowires

An integrated electronic system to operate a silicon nanowire based explosives detector. It consists of 32 channels of source meter with programmable gain. The system is based on a TMS320F28335 controller manufactured by Texas Instruments and controlled by a Windows based software through a USB port.

Rape-drug detection system

A miniaturized electronic system for a "rape-drug" detector, based on a Texas Instruments 430MSP controller.

A miniaturized scanning tunneling microscope (STM) system

A low-cost educational STM system. A mechanical head and an electronic controller connecting via USB to a computer and operated by a CVI based software. The system is based on FPGAs programmed to use a VHDL code.

An ultra-fast amplifier with a low noise for measuring electrical discharges

A fast, high-bandwidth (350 MHz) amplifier for a multi-channel plate detector. The amplifier is designed to measure very fast electrical discharges within a plasma or molecular ensembles. This development was published in the MST journal and was purchased by many research labs all over the world.

In the photo below: An amplifier integrated in the plasma lab at the University of California, San Diego.

A controller for a fast pulsed valve

A pulse generator for a pulsed valve operating at a high rate. The generator supplies pulses with variable widths, with 100 ns resolution, a frequency up to 1000 Hz and an intensity of 300V/100A. The generator is digitally controlled by a logic system programmed with a VHDL code. The system was sold to many laboratories in Europe, the US and Japan.